Tag Archives: kathryn troy

Today I am interviewing Kathryn Troy, author of the new romantic, epic fantasy novel, A Vision in Crimson, first book of the Frostbite series.

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DJ: Hey Kathryn! Thanks for agreeing to do this interview!

For readers who aren’t familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself?

Kathryn Troy: Hi DJ, thanks for having me! I’m a new voice to dark fantasy, and A Vision in Crimson is my first published novel. I’ve been a writer longer than I’ve been a novelist, with my nonfiction book, The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender and Ghosts in American Séances, 1848-1898, being released by SUNY Press in September. Other than that, I’m a self-professed expert in all things weird and unnatural, a gourmand, and a world traveler.

DJ: What A Vision in Crimson about?

Kathryn: It’s a magical, romantic adventure that brings together a woman who escaped Victorian London to become a fantasy heroine with a vampire half-breed equally fed up with his limited choices. The chemistry between Kate and Luca on the page is explosive. But all is not well in paradise, and their disparate backgrounds and abilities are united to combat the terrors that creep into the mythical realm of Icarya.

DJ: What is the world, Icarya, and setting of the Frostbite series like?

Kathryn: I started with the familiar concept of idyllic fantasies like Narnia, populated with magical hybrids (an ideal place for a mixed-blood vampire to call home). Some of the unique flavors I’ve added to that trope are the Spiritualist concept of the “Summer Land,” a descriptive term for a heaven that is Edenic and Romantic but with all the loftiest aspirations of civilization—sciences, the arts, museums and libraries, set right alongside legends of animated forests and deep magic. The different cities within the greater Icaryan universe are not so fertile or fortunate; Likhan, a slaving city, is a close neighbor and tenuous ally of Icarya. That relationship will crumble in the first volume, and you will see its importance to Icaryan interests develop over the course of the series.

Another layer is that Katelyn and her brother, born into the wonders of a newly electrified city, bring that technology with them. Referred to as Icaryan light, its waning presents the challenge Katelyn is combating as the novel opens.

Some of my favorite fantasy worlds are the ones with rich religious cultures—that is something that also grows over the Frostbite series, simply because their forest-based beliefs are so ancient that they have been relegated to the stuff of legend. Kate’s pursuit of those histories and her relationship to them take up a good portion of her personal narrative in this epic tale.Continue reading →